THE SOURCE: A Curriculum Guide for Reading Mentors

[Pages:184]THE SOURCE:

A Curriculum Guide for

Reading Mentors

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1 Ideas for Building Readers

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten

How Do Children Become Readers? What Research Tells Us About Struggling Readers Meeting the Needs of Struggling Readers Phonemic Awareness: The Foundation for Phonics Skills Phonics and Decoding Skills Building Fluency Word Building for Increasing Vocabulary Comprehension: The Reason for Learning to Read Finding Appropriate Reading Materials Individual Assessments

PART 2 PLANNING Resources for Intervention Sessions

Tutoring Session LESSON 1-30 Routines

Individual Assessment Forms

Nonsense Word Test Sight-Word Proficiency Assessment Oral Reading Fluency Passage

Mentoring Lesson Plans

Student Survey Poems: Eighteen Flavors and Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Independent Reading Chart Student Book List Form Reciprocal Teaching Chart Word Web Phonogram Speed Drill Blank Speed Drill Syllable Bingo Word Search Racetrack Game Spin It!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Part 1

IDEAS FOR BUILDING READERS

CHAPTER ONE

HOW DO CHILDREN BECOME READERS?

"At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book --- that string of confused, alien ciphers --- shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader."

All children deserve the promise that books hold. Whether they transport us to another world, make us laugh or cry, teach us something new, or introduce us to people we wouldn't otherwise meet, we are thankful for their gifts. In turn, all children deserve the gift of reading. And as educators, we bear the responsibility and honor of delivering that gift. Students come to school with a wide range of reading skills and ability levels. Some have mastered most of the skills they'll need to decode and comprehend more complex text; others still struggle with the most basic and critical skills. Your task --- and challenge --- is to help these students to face the demands of texts filled with new and long words and complex ideas.

This guidebook is designed to help you better understand our complex language to improve and expand students' reading skills. Your students will gain insights into our fascinating language, get excited about words, and become fluent readers. You'll help them to develop a passion for books and an understanding of how books can provide pleasure and information.

With reading as one of the mot important skills for children to learn, what should be the primary goals of reading instruction? These goals are often mentioned:

1. Automatic word recognition (fluency) 2. Comprehension of text 3. Development of a love of literature and desire to read

The first of these goals --- automatic word recognition --- is one of the greatest challenges for students in learning to read. To become skilled readers, students must be able to identify words quickly and accurately. And to do that, they must be proficient at decoding words. Decoding words involves converting the printed word into spoken language. A reader decodes a word by sounding it out by using structural analysis and syllabication techniques, or recognizing the word by sight. In order to sound out words, a reader must be able to associate a specific spelling with a specific sound. Phonics involves this relationship between sounds and their spellings.

Approximately 84% of English words are phonetically regular. Therefore, teaching the most common sound-spelling relationships in English is extremely useful to readers. One of the early hurdles in helping children to read is helping them to understand that the series of symbols that we call the alphabet

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maps out the sounds of our language in some predictable ways. This is a key insight into early reading. And it enables children to get off to a quick start in relating sounds to spellings in order to decode words.

Once children grasp this key insight and learn the most common soundspellings that they meet in the earlier grades, their next hurdle involves decoding multisyllabic words. Some older students find it extremely difficult to read these words. They can't recognize common spelling patterns or larger chunks of the words that may help in sounding them out. And many more of the words in the books they're now reading are new to them, are not familiar to them. These words are not in their vocabulary. Discovering the meanings of these unfamiliar words is critical to understanding the meaning of what they read. Learning advanced phonics skills helps. For example, one important way to determine a word's meaning is by understanding the meanings of prefixes and root words. There are significant differences between the word "relevant" and "irrelevant," "play" and "playful."

Comprehension is certainly the most important part of reading. But how does the ability to decode words help a reader understand text? The chart below shows that strong decoding ability is necessary for reading comprehension.

Phonics instruction helps the reader to map out the sounds onto their spellings. Students must have phonemic awareness skills in order to match sounds to their spellings. Decoding words helps to develop and improve word recognition. The more words one recognizes, the easier the reading task. Therefore, phonics instruction aids in the development of word recognition by providing children with an important and useful way to figure out unfamiliar words while reading.

When children begin to be able to recognize a large number of words quickly and accurately, reading fluency improves. As it becomes easier and easier for the student to recognize more and more words, he or she gains fluency and becomes automatic and makes less reading errors.

Reading fluency improves reading comprehension. Since children are no longer struggling with decoding words, they can devote their full attention to constructing meaning while they read the text. As the vocabulary and concept demands increase in text, children need to be able to devote more of their attention to making meaning from text, and increasingly less attention to decoding. If children have to devote too much time to decoding words their reading will be slow and labored. This will result in comprehension problems. The final result is that the student will not want to read.

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However, this is not the only skill a reader needs to make meaning from text. When they read, children need to be able to use other skills that interact with one another such as these listed below:

1) Most children have an understanding of how sentences are put together, however, oral language is different from "book language." Written material pose difficulties for some children because their oral language patterns are different from the formal language patterns of text. Children must be able to understand how sentences are put together in text in order to be able to predict while they are reading. Reading books out loud to students helps them to gain an understanding of the more formal sentence structure of text.

2) Students need knowledge of the world around them in order to understand what they read. This knowledge helps the student to use clues in the text to discover the meaning of a new word. The reader needs this knowledge in order to determine what makes sense in what they read. Reading aloud to students and talking about what they have heard will help them to gain this type of knowledge.

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CHAPTER TWO

WHAT RESEARCH TELLS US ABOUT STRUGGLING READERS

Countless research has been conducted in the area of reading. Much of this research has focused on the usefulness of phonics instruction and the best way is to teach children about sound-spelling relationships. Below is the list of ten of the top research findings.

#1: PHONICS INSTRUCTION CAN HELP ALL CHILDREN LEARN TO READ.

All children can benefit from instruction in the most common sound-spelling relationships and syllable patterns in English. This instruction helps children to decode words that follow these predictable sound-spelling relationships and syllable-spelling patterns.

Phonics instruction is particularly beneficial for children at risk for learning difficulties. This might include children who come to school with limited exposure to books, have had few opportunities to develop their oral languages, are from low socio-economic families, have below-average intelligence, are learning English as a second language, or are suspected of having a learning disability. However, even children from language-rich backgrounds benefit from this instruction. A reading researcher once said, "By learning phonics, students make faster progress in acquiring literacy skills --- reading and writing. By the age of six, most children already have about 6,000 words in their listening and speaking vocabularies. With phonics, they learn to read and write these and more words at a faster rate than they would without phonics."

Phonics instruction is, therefore, an essential ingredient in reading instruction, as it teaches children how to read with accuracy, comprehension, fluency, and pleasure. Readers who are skilled at decoding usually comprehend text better than those who are poor decoders. Weak decoding skills are characteristic of poor readers. Decoding requires so much mental energy, and if a student struggles to decode what is read, then little mental energy is left over for higher-level comprehension. As decoding skills improve and more and more words are recognized by sight, less mental energy is required to decode words and more mental energy can be devoted to making meaning from the text.

Successful early decoding ability is related to the number of words a reader sees. Children who are good decoders read many more words than children who are poor decoders. Wide reading results in greater reading growth. Children not only learn to recognize more words and their meanings, but they become more familiar with the common spelling patterns of English, which in turn helps them to decode longer words. It is a cycle that continues on and on.

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#2: DIRECT APPROACHES TO TEACHING ARE BETTER THAN "DISCOVERY" METHODS.

The most effective approach to helping students in learning to read is a systematic and direct approach. This is true especially for children at risk for reading difficulties. The discovery method relies on readers "discovering" clues about sound-spelling relationships. Good readers can do this; poor readers are not likely to discover. Good readers can generalize their knowledge to read new words and see new patterns. In order to effectively learn, poor readers must rely on a direct approach.

#3: MOST POOR READERS HAVE WEAK PHONICS SKILLS AND A STRATEGY IMBALANCE.

Most poor readers have a strategy imbalance. They tend to over-rely on one reading strategy such as using context clues. They do not use other strategies that might be more appropriate. To become skilled, fluent readers, children need to have a variety of strategies to figure out unfamiliar words. These strategies include using knowledge of sound-spelling relationships, using context clues, and using structural clues and syllabication. Younger and less skilled readers rely more on context than other, more effective strategies. This is partly due to their inability to use sound-spelling relationships to decode words. Stronger readers don't need to rely on context clues because they can quickly and accurately decode words by sounding them out.

#4: PHONICS KNOWLEDGE HAS A POWERFUL EFFECT ON DECODING ABILITY.

One way to help children make meaning of text --- the ultimate goal of reading instruction --- is to help them achieve automaticity in decoding words. A child's word recognition speed in first grade was found to be a strong predictor of reading comprehension ability in second grade. Devoting large amounts of mental energy to decoding words leaves less mental energy available for higher-level comprehension. This can result in comprehension breakdowns.

#5: GOOD DECODERS RELY LESS ON CONTEXT CLUES THAN POOR READERS.

Good readers don't need to rely as much on context clues because their decoding skills are so strong. It's only when good readers can't use their knowledge of sound-spelling relationships to figure out an unfamiliar word that they rely on context clues. In contrast, poor readers, who often have weak decoding skills, over-rely on context clues to try to make meaning of text. Any reader, strong or weak, can use context clues only up to a certain point. It has been estimated that only one out of every four words (25%) can be predicted

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